With nature's help I've created my garden!

Mayo County Council gave me two triangles in which to build my garden: one of concrete for the container garden and hanging out my laundry; the other a triangle of compacted muddy soil, sown with tenacious grass seed combined with builder’s rubble.

Nothing in my garden is sheltered from the south-westerly wind, which pummels straight off the hills at the back. Every gardener has challenges, and one of mine was to find things that will grow in extremely windy conditions.

I’ll happily take that wind every day of the week, as it comes from the open pasture and hills out the back, which allows me to watch horses while I sit on my exercise bike, or enjoy the sight of cows munching in the distance as I sit with my breakfast.

The other challenges are having only one good leg and 1.5 dodgy lungs, combined with the fact that my entire plot is on top of an absolutely massive bramble root system. My neighbour told me when I moved in that over the 40 years he’s lived next door, he’d seen many try to build a garden on this patch; all  failed.

The container garden has been a treat. Sheltered from view I sit and enjoy the colours in peace and privacy. I never sit for long, ‘cos I’m off up and deadheading this, tying up that, studying the other and getting mud on my fingers every day.

Good for the soul.

I’ve also used that space to take cuttings and grow the plants that I wanted in my formal bed. 

 

...baby brachyglottis for the front of the bed... cuttings taken from himself behind the lavendar...

Herbs and strawbs...

First job, as soon as I moved in 18 months ago: cover the entire grassy triangle with Mypex membrane, which lets the water through but denies light and life to everything underneath. Don’t be tempted to use black plastic. It’s not porous so it’s not healthy for living beasties who live below.

Did I say entire? Well ,no, I left the grass exposed in the little triangle where I wanted wildflowers to grow. So the grass grew until last winter, when 

slowly slowly, slowly.

in wellies and mud mud mud,

all the time,
taking breaks,
listening to the wind,

and my raspy old breath.

What a racket.
Like a flash flood forced through rice cakes.

Slowly muddily removing the grass from the wildflower bed. Five two hour sessions of lifting this barren lifeless turf, not an earthworm or creepy-crawly in sight, dead soil, perfect for the resilient unwelcome grass provided by Co. Mayo.

For a small job removing that grass from what is now my wildflower bed was a massive task. Grass usually wins in the end, although as I said before, on this plot bramble will supersede all.

I really didn’t expect it to work so well. I was thinking at least 20% of the grass would return, which I’d still see as a result, but scarcely any has returned so far.

Grasses and chickstickers come through the gap in the fence, and bramble from all directions, but the grass is under control. It pops up here and there, but I’m on it like a wasp on jam.

Actually, that’s a lie: none of it is under control. I’m just on top of it, on my little patch, at the moment.

That’s all it is.
‘On top of it’ is as good as it gets.

I’m not trying to subjugate the powers of nature. I’m merely encouraging, enabling, and the rest is out of my hands.

That grassless lifeless triangle was then given bags of garden fertiliser, wood chips, potting compost and more garden fertiliser. I was nicking worms from friends’ gardens, bringing ‘em home and dropping them in there.

Then I sowed my wildflower seed, walking on top of it, all over for a while, and moved on.

That bed has never been watered or weeded. I’m not deadheading it. I’m letting it do its thing and loving how many plants that weren’t in my wildflower seed collection are now showing their faces.

That makes me smile.

I took all the containers growing plants for the new formal bed and put them on the mypex where the formal bed is now, laying an edge border with some old laminates...

 

 

...and then I got two tonnes of sandstone gravel dropped into my tiny garden.

That mountain stood in front of me and several times challenged my will.

But slowly slowly.
Rake and stop.
Breathe.
Slowly.

Wasn’t as tough as it looked.
Compared to the grass it was a doddle, but oh yeh! Now I was walking on stone, not flooded muddy mypex.
Oh my god that was just wonderful.

This summer I took delivery of two trellises, a tonne of topsoil, seven 25kg bags of horticultural grit and four bags of manure, to which I added five bags of fine garden compost. All of that I laid lasagne style into the new more formal bed. 

Now the plants are all in, and I’m sowing the bed with feverfew seeds and the seeds of giant nigella (love in a mist) growing in my containers. I figure that’ll fill the spaces with all sorts of colour and form.

All my own seeds, my cuttings and lurrrve, but nature's work.

The only plants I bought were the fuchsia and the honeysuckle - everything else I grew myself. The plan is that the brachyglottis cuttings in front will grow and be clipped into a low hedge, forming a border. The bees love its yellow flowers.
 

 

The pollinators love all my garden. The wildflowers, the fuchsia, the columbine, the sunflowers … everything.

I figured if the blackberry love it so much, its cousins might like it too. I love berries, so huge thanks to Denis for the soft fruit canes.

Also thanks to Mary Munnelly for the rambling rose. I’m so glad to show you how that gorgeous tiny plant you gave me four years ago ended up taking over a wall. Looking forward to next spring when it will be covered in flowers. I’ll make sure to show you when that happens. 

Thanks Mary!

Now I have my yin/yang garden. Wildflower anarchy and freedom on the left. Order in the bed on the right.

Hmm, well ... as much ‘order’ as a rambling rose and two honeysuckles allow.

I built my garden, and now the plants can grow.

 

 

 

©Charlie Adley 08.09.2026

Thankfully you're as loopy as me!

Thanks as always to Allan Cavanagh for the great artwork

 

After lunch I jump into Joey SX and aim for Lough Conn. Out of my cocoon for the first time today, I wonder what’s going on in the world, so I flip on the radio, expecting to hit NewsTalk, but it’s on Today FM.

Fine, who needs to know what’s going on in the world, when you can have a good old sing song? Ooh, even better, they’re doing a quiz.

Unfortunately, I missed the question, but evidently up for grabs is a big weekend for two, in a posh 'resort spa.' I think last year we called them hotels.

Yer man Gerry on the end of the phone is suckin' diesel. Everything is just so funny to him, he can’t stop wid da larfin and da larfin.

I imagine Gerry as an explosion of long curly black hair, cascading over a ball-shaped head, his stubbly face stretched in ecstasy.

“Well, now, Gerry, you said 83, Maria, you guessed 189, and Sean, well you reckoned it was 458. The right answer was.......112, so Gerry in Dublin, well done mate! You’ve won a weekend away for two!”

“Oh tanks! Tanks Tony, tanks tanks tanks! Wow, dass grea’, really grea’! Who’d-a tortit? Who’d-a tortit? Jaize, I tort I was way off!”

Driving along, I wear a big smile on my face, as I enjoy the harmless happiness of a winner. Yet soon enough my mind starts to spin around, in a metaphysical more than Exorcist kind've way. 

Then the driver of car behind me is hooting his horn because, instead of noticing the traffic lights have gone green, I’m staring into space, lost in deep and meaningful philosophical wonder.

Unless my ears deceive me, I just heard Gerry on the radio say he thought his winning answer was “way off."

But hang on...

If he thought his own answer was wrong, then why...

Fantastic! Marvellous! Couldn’t happen anywhere else.

If I told this as an Oirish joke at a London dinner party, I’d be considered vulgar and racist, but right here right now, I’m loving the fact that whenever I think I might be going loopy, the people of Ireland make me feel right at home.

Now before ye all get uppity and irascible and accuse me of accusing you of being nothing more than a bunch of nutters, I suggest that from my perspective, this is a massive compliment.

But anyway, I wasn’t calling you a bunch of nutters: just some of you; well, quite a lot of you, but I reiterate, it’s truly a form of praise, coming from me.

As defined by the cold harsh steel of North European Protestantism, ‘Sanity’ is a fearfully boring and staid state in which to exist.

I love living in a country where people don’t even agree with their own answers!

 

 

©Charlie Adley

06.08.2026

 

SALTHILL PROM AND MY MIND MIX A MIGHTY COCKTAIL!

... a line of gold lit up along the length of the cloud, a shimmering rim of brilliance running across the entire opening of Galway Bay.

 

I had a bit of a moment the other day. With an hour to kill before a meeting in town I drove to Salthill, walked across the car park to the Prom and stood on a rock on the sea wall.

The early evening air was cool and clear. There was not a breath of wind. Under the fading light of a clear blue sky the water in the bay lay perfectly still, a silvery sheen pockmarked by bobbing bunches of seaweed.

Climbing down the rocks I walked along the beach, until I was beyond Palmer’s Rock. The sun was sinking behind a massive wall of dark cloud, towering high into the west, rising from the horizon until it occupied a third of the sky.

As the sun disappeared behind this vast grey barrier, a line of gold lit up along the cloud’s upper edge, a shimmering rim of brilliance running across the entire opening of Galway Bay.

In contrast to this dazzling line of light, the wall of cloud below turned black. Had you just arrived as a stranger in the place I stood, you might well believe that this water vapour was in fact stone; that Galway Bay was a lake, edged by mountains high and mighty, from Black Head to Bearna.

Even though I know a cloud when I see one, something primal deep inside me double checked to make sure that this black monolith was not a tidal wave, rushing to consume us all.

No. Nothing as dramatic as that. So calm, in fact, that the ocean’s edge became indistinguishable from the beach. As the tide edged out it left a glistening shine on the sand, while dusk’s light bounced off the motionless ocean, appearing as a blend of mercury and mirrors.

Despite the roar of traffic in the background and the hordes walking along the Prom, I still managed to find my own space and peace down there.

Staring at a tiny lump of sand, watching as the water lapped over it and receded, waiting, watching, waiting, watching, wondering when will come that moment when the tide might turn.

It’s what I do; what I did that evening and have done everywhere I’ve lived in the West of Ireland. I watch the tide and drift into peace.

Neither Mindfulness nor Meditation, and yet equally both, I have no desire to put a label on it.

I stared for hours at the sunken rocks of Bunowen Bay and the dunes of Doonloughan when I lived in west Connemara. For years in north Mayo I've watched the tide turn along Ross beach, and lost myself many a time in the utter splendour and endless beauty of Kilcummin back strand.

Yet all these natural wonders and altered mental states were only the precursor to my moment. As is often the way, my mind used tide-staring as a trigger to my past.

Adrift within the calmest moment the Atlantic seaboard could ever offer, I suddenly felt lost at sea, washed overboard by a freak wave of emotion.

Replacing my physical vision with a reel of memories, my mind ran a major film event in front of my eyes, showing me reruns of many of the varied events in the last 34 years of my life that have played out on Salthill Prom.

The night in August 1992, when I sat there on the rocks with my new-found friend, as we decided to stay; to try and find a home and make a life here in Galway.

The day when, seven years later, having failed in and fled from America, I stumbled along the Prom, searching for stability, soaking up familiarity.

The night in 1993 when I fell out of Vagabonds and sat on the sea wall with my beautiful date, stole a kiss, sipped whiskey from a naggin, felt thrilled at the opportunities the night ahead offered, and then dropped my house keys into the deep dark void between the rocks.

The day I walked to Gentian Hill believing I would never again take a step without back pain, and the day when I realised it was gone.

The countless out-loud talks I’ve had with myself, like the crazy guy you don’t want to sit next to on the bus. Open dialogues that escape my mind, transforming into voice, in your space and face, as I walk alone along the Prom.

Back in 1992, a few days after my decision to try and build a life in Galway, the weather finally changed and my jaw dropped. Up until then, fog and low cloud had obscured the Burren, so great was my joy when for the first time I saw the sensual purple hills of County Clare.

Thousands of walks along the Prom: my lifeline; my mental health; my physical saviour.

The Prom lifted my spirits, clearing my head of the detritus of everyday life. Along its length I spilled my emotional angst, vitriol and bile, so that by time I returned home my mind was free, my spirit cleansed, my body alive and tingling.

Meteorological marvels have sometimes allowed me to make out smoke rising from a chimney far across the bay in Ballyvaughan. A beam of sunlight picks out a field of rich deep green above Bell Harbour, and when the light shimmers and glows in just right way, all three Aran islands can float into view, vibrating as melting mirages in the distance.

I was silly to be surprised by my moment. I had not been to the Prom for many months and was foolish to underestimate my love for it and Galway Bay.

My heart was almost washed away by the flood of memories. My soul lifted like a kite in the wind, tears swelled in my eyes.

Having paid my respects to the Prom and my past I gave thanks, turned around and walked on.

©Charlie Adley 

16.07.2026

Despite FIFA, this World Cup has brought us all closer together!

 Pics thanks to Bouna/Bendel family

Last night my brother (more a fan of rugby and cricket where England is concerned) sent a message to our Siblings WhatsApp group, asking if my sister and I would be watching the England v Norway game.

I’m sure he knew I would be. He said that they had friends coming over for dinner, but would be insisting that either they left early or stayed to watch the match.

My sister (a massive fan of Wimbledon but not football, although she watched the entire Mexico game) explained how her young grandson was going to watch with his parents at friends, while she would be watching with her little granddaughter on a sleepover.

Apart from weddings and funerals I cannot think of any other event in which we would all be involved simultaneously.

Despite the worst efforts of FIFA, this World Cup has achieved what all previous have done: it has brought us all closer together, as a species.

With more countries qualifying than ever before, the group stage felt bloated and lacking in jeopardy, but it also gave us magic moments.

Hands up here: I didn’t even know Curaçao was a place. I thought it was just an ingredient in cocktails, but the footage of the TV journalist reporting from a bar in the tiny Caribbean island at the precise moment that their team scored a goal was priceless.

The place exploded with exuberant joy, leaving the journo no choice but to join in, leaping up and down like a 7 year-old.

The world smiled at that moment.

We’ve seen minnows Cape Verde holding mighty World Champions Argentina to a draw for 111 minutes, and on the way learned that the place we describe as ‘Cape Verdy’ is known by its own people as ‘Cap Verd.’

Small details that matter a great deal if you come from Cape Verde. 

As an Englishman living in the Republic of Ireland I no longer go to the pub to watch England games.

Apparently it wasn’t Oscar Wilde who said:

“The problem is the English can't remember history, while the Irish can't forget it.”

Whoever it was nailed it. After 35 years here, living with the daily, often hourly challenge of being slagged off for things the English did during their occupation of this island, I no longer find it amusing to be heckled and belittled throughout a game.

Instead I choose to stay home, and enjoy rare times in which I’m grateful for social media, sharing the excitement with my English friends and family elsewhere around the world. 

As for tonight’s match I have my doubts. There are massive parallels between being a Chelsea fan and an England fan. My beloved Blues will beat Barcelona on Wednesday and lose to a tiny team on Saturday.

Norway are in no way a tiny team, but England’s victory over Mexico felt like their final. The intensity of our celebrations and physical exertions were massive, and if we lose to Norway tonight, it’ll match a pattern that has existed for decades: struggle out of the groups; win a major knockout game; start to believe the crazed hype; get overexcited and then lose.

History shows us that the Vikings tend to excel against the English. If Norway win, having already beaten the legendary football force that is Brazil, I will feel gutted, but also delighted for them, along with my friends Line and John in Oslo.

FIFA’s gangster leader Johnny Babyface (aka Gianni Infantino) cares not a jot for the Beautiful Game. He is interested only in money and power.

Hence rules were changed so that Ronaldo’s red card in Portugal’s final qualifying game was suspended, along with the mighty scandal of USA striker Balogun's red card reversal, after intervention from Trump.

Did the president really care about the USA Soccer team? No, as ever you have to follow the money: take a look at the crazily inflated prices the US TV networks were able to charge for advertising space during USA games, and boom! You’ve found the lobby that drove that decision.

 

In the tradition of Morecambe and Wise, here’s a little poem wot I wrote to show how I feel:

Gianni Babycakes decides what is or is not
Whichever way he dives you know he cops the lot.
Seems that Human Rights Violations
Help him choose his host nations
From Russia to Qatar,
USA to Saudi Arabiaaaar      (ouch!)
Gianni is on a mission
To treat us fans with derision.

This colyoom isn’t about the corrupt greed that powers FIFA.
It’s about the pure joy and excitement felt by lovers of the game all over the world.

The pictures here are from friends of mine in London. A Spanish/English family who have cooked a different nation’s food each night, depending on who plays that day. 

When the parents went away for the weekend the kids carried on and cooked for each nation each night. 

When Jude Bellingham was asked how he felt about being booed and jeered as he got off the plane in Mexico City, he smiled and said he loved it, because he admired the passion Mexicans felt for football.

We love loving football. It unites families, friends and nations, offering us all a unique camaraderie (unless you’re Irish.)

I still can’t see anyone beating France, and in the pit of my stomach I see England being knocked out tonight, but I love being wrong, almost as much as I love football.

Maybe, as the landlord of my village pub ironically declared each time I’ve walked in over the last three weeks:

“It’s coming home!”

I very much doubt it, but in the true tradition of the Beautiful Game, let’s hope that at the end of the day, football is the winner. 

 

©Charlie Adley

11.07.2026.

Celebrating a million readers, a special request: Not for everyone, this life where less is more.

A special request from Mike, the editor who awarded me the colyoom and subbed it for 27 years. From November 2001. This is the final visit into the pre-online archive, I promise!

Ever since 1984, I’ve been living on a 24-hour financial cycle, and it’s as tiring as it is liberating.

Rent, food and bills are always covered, and generally I clothe myself in not too disgraceful a fashion. I run a car, visit family and friends in England two or three times a year, and my house is warm.

Most important of all, my life has exceptionally good people in it, but 90% of the time I have not a penny to spend.

Beyond presents for others, and the bare necessities, I do not buy things.

Nada. Zilch.

In the past there were day jobs, night jobs, shift work, temporary, permanent, and on the fly.

I was never perceived as so ‘successful’ as when I was working my backside off as a marketing whizz-kid, for a major Japanese corporate back in the early 1980s. I was earning more money than should be legal for a 23 year-old, and fast-tracking my way up to the Boardroom.

That was when I learned an absolute personal truth: there is no point in earning moolar if it comes in the form of compensation.

So I hate my job? Well, now I can go and spend lots of money, and see if it makes me feel better!

It didn’t, doesn’t and never will.

To me ‘civilised’ means having time to live.

In exchange for the fat wad of folding green every Thursday night, I take a walk on the beach.

Instead of buying CD’s and videos, I listen to the radio and play old cassettes.

Instead of the brimming bank balance, I have all the time in the world.

The stress in others’ lives is palpable. I see the tired black rings around their eyes, listen to their frantic gabbling about how they are trying to ‘fit it all in’, and in those moments, I remind myself that this relative poverty is worth a fortune.

It ain’t all easy. This is a life as tough as any other, just a lot calmer.

My life is less about acquisition, more about introspection; less about buying things, more about less things; less about climbing social ladders, more about spending time living in the present.

Sometimes it is a lonely path, especially when I’m home alone, aware that others are out, living life on the pig’s back.

Still, I’m hardly a slave to suffering, and when a particularly smart editor places one of my features, I drive to the city and splurge a wad in an orgy of consumerist conformism, and each shared whiskey and bite of restaurant food tastes better for the utter badness and excitement of it all.

This colyoom is not pre-scented with smugness. I couldn’t look my loved ones in the eye if I suggested that my life is a breeze.

Of course I get frustrated when I want to take herself out for a posh slap-up dinner, and I feel inhibited when generous souls drag me out to the pub, knowing that rounds only go one way, but hell, they seem to love me, and who am I to say no?

Sometimes, even when you know your friend really wants to help, you just can’t accept any more generosity.

And then you get over it and say

“Well, a wee whiskey would be lovely, thanks Dave!” 

 

©Charlie Adley

12.11.2001

Celebrating a million readers - the 2nd of my faves is from 2011: 'This is my Jerusalem!'

                                                             www.irelandinpicture.net

Happy Ever After... is a pointless ambition. Happiness comes like a swallow in Summer, a snowflake on warm grass.

Happiness lasts for a second or two years, and the important thing is to realise it, feel it while it lasts. 

I felt happiness for a few precious minutes last week, and I drank deeply of it. 

A brief hiatus appeared in the midst of the maelstrom that has been life in recent times, so I packed Blue Bag and headed off to Newport, Co. Mayo. 

Walking into the first Bed and Breakfast I found, just outside the small town, I lingered in an empty reception area as an older man and an invisible woman had a heated discussion in the kitchen.

I paced up and down, knowing they knew I was there, slightly irked that they were ignoring a potential customer, but patient; grateful to be there at all. 

Eventually the older man decided to acknowledge me, walking towards me, asking what I wanted. I was standing by a reception desk with a bag on my shoulder, so I was just a tad surprised when he raised his eyebrow at my request for a room.

He called for Herself, and out she came. Fifty year-old deeply-lined skin on the face of a forty year-old smoker, she refused to return the smile I was pumping at her, instead telling me she had to check her book to see if she had a free room.

While she did that I cast an eye into the Visitors Book. The last entry was made two days previously.

She had a room. She had loads of rooms. She was just looking for the least good room she could award to this single traveller. On the ground floor, two single beds and a tiny en suite, but fine, I’ll take it, I said.

How much? Oooh, er emm, bit steep, but okay. I was tired and even though she pitched her price at the top end of the B&B marketplace, I wasn’t going to argue. 

So I unpacked, put on my trackies and a fleece and lay back on the bed. The wall opposite was one huge window that opened out onto the rear car park, so anybody and everybody could see me.

I boiled the kettle and out in the hallway found in the fridge with some rank smelly milk. The little pre-wrapped 3-pack of Custard Creams on my room’s tea tray was beyond its Best Before date.

Refusing to let anything get me down, I lay back on the bed.
Peace and quiet, hoo yeh baby. I never ever nap or take a siesta, but here, now, I had a chance. 

No I didn’t. Outside my door, noisy as if in my face, fresh B&B guests had arrived. Herself was laughing and chatting and being generally lovely with them and I wondered why I’d lost out on her charm.

She showed them into the room next door and was oh ho-ho having a good old laugh with them, so she was, ho-ho. 

They went to their loo and took a shower and I swear I felt like I was immersed inside the runway of a major airport. Explosive noises shot over under and around me as symphonic plumbing went mental in my lug holes. 

I felt miserable. All I’d wanted was to find a quiet clean place  The place was clean alright but it was neither cheap, friendly, quiet nor private.

Facing Herself again would be a pain, but ah, screw it. 

Dressed and packed, I headed back to reception, where I had to knock on doors and wait for ages. I could’ve just left, but I wanted to be polite, offer her a couple of quid for her trouble and the cup of tea with off milk and stale biscuits (oh come on, of course I ate them - it was only a Best Before date!)

Her face was a picture as I mumbled some excuse as to why I had to go.

She shook her grim chin at my couple of Euro and then headed off at high speed to the room I’d been in, doubtless to see what I’d stolen from her. 

As I climbed back into the car I laughed. What was I going to nick? Her ancient grotty bedspreads? I think not. 

At the top of Newport's hill I headed into the hotel, where Roisin quoted me a price ten euro more than the B&B (ignore any rate cards you ever see in Irish hotels, absolutely). She listened to my needs and gave me a quiet room tucked away far from the bar.

As I opened the door I let out a whoop! It was huge and modern and clean and well worth the extra tenner. The skin-piercing shower alone was worth the extra dosh. All of a sudden I wanted to sing out loud. 

Feeling for the first time that I might be on holiday, I started at the furthest point from the hotel, sliding into each of the five pubs in town, ordering a Jameson in each and being given exactly that. No urban enquiries of whether I’d like ice or water or essence of Christian Dior in my whiskey: just a simple glass with a neat Jamie. 

Many evenings of my life have been spent in rural pubs and small town bars in the West of Ireland, but that night I didn’t really feel like chasing the craic.

I hadn’t the energy, so after I ran out of bars, and while the midsummer sun was still above the distant dark hills, I walked up the road to the church. 

At the top of the hill, I leaned on the stone wall and realised it was June 23rd, St. John’s Eve: bonfire night in Catholic countries.

Below green fields fell away toward the windy wee road, twisting its way to somewhere. Beyond the road the valley rose with stone walls and lush fields, blending into the black distant Nephin Beg range of hills.

Bonfires, everywhere, how many? 12, 13, 17, every house that might have been invisible in the fading evening light became a point on the map. Smoke spires dotted the landscape, as if a thousand new Popes had been announced. 

Small purple clouds clipped the fading sun’s dazzle, as it started to slip below the hills, and I found peace. 

This is my green and pleasant land. This is my Jerusalem.

This was my moment to be happy. I've learned how to spot it now. So many people miss their own happiness. It’s gone before their next bad time hits them over the head. They might then wonder why life is worth it, and that is a tragedy. 

The only thing I didn’t know was how long this happiness would last, but I didn’t care. The sun was gone, the sky crimson and pink as I turned away from the stone wall and took a wander around the church.

Recently restored with shiny pointing and a mini round tower, it was lovely.

A woman in a house behind me suddenly said hello. She was having a ciggie out of her window and I said hello back.

"Hello, lovely evening isn’t it!"
"Lovely!"

Strangers who say hello, just because you’re there.

Around the far side of the church I came across a door with a sign that said Sacristy and Toilets and behind it, I heard a young man singing. He had no idea that I was there, but I could tell he was writing a song. Maybe he was a young priest, composing something for his Sunday sermon.

He sang as a priest might, with a strong steady falsetto voice, ecclesiastical, lyrical and ethereal. 

"La la laaaaaaaa..." 

He was writing a song. I wondered what it was about?  

"Laaa laa la la laaaa..." 

He coughed and then sang the words of his song for the first time. 

“Property Tax, Property Tax,
They’re going to give us a Property Tax,

I’m looking forward to the Property Tax.
Water Tax, Water Tax, 

How will we pay the Water Tax?
I’m looking forward to the Water Tax...

We’ll all go to jail for the Property Tax....
lal la laaa...”   

and then he was wordless again, doubtless penning the lyrics to a second verse.

But it was perfect.

A priest in touch with the plight of his flock.
A scribbler at one with the splendour of rural Ireland.
Happiness, for which I am grateful.

 

©Charlie Adley

27.06.2011

 

Celebrating a million readers, here's the first of my two favourite DVs: 'A loving and thoughtful act brings about my confession!'

 

Jon Lewin

A couple of weeks ago I received in the post a package which reaffirmed my faith in human nature. Although it only contained a simple T-shirt, I was surprised, delighted and emotionally overwrought.

By way of explanation, I have to offer a confession.

Back in September I was sponsored to participate in the Galway Hospice’s Memorial Walk, a splendid and very successful event which raises much-needed funds for the most worthy of causes. Each walker wears a T-shirt on which is printed the name of a person in whose memory they walked that day.

I chose to walk in memory of Jon Lewin, a life-long friend who died of a brain tumour a few short years ago.

Upon arriving at Claddagh Hall I was given a package containing the T-shirt I had ordered, and went off to the Gents to put it on.

At the back of my mind, a wee small irritating voice had been nagging me for days, wondering if they would have spelled his name right. And lo, as soon as I saw the shirt out of its wrapping, there was the name a certain John Lewin.

And then I cried.

Clearly, I didn’t cry because they had spelled his name wrong. There are many things that upset me, as regular colyoomistas know, but an excellent institution such as the Galway Hospice awarding hundreds of walkers free T-shirts in a thoughtful tribute to lost loved ones could never be a cause for complaint.

No, I was mourning, and it hit me like a tsunami. I had written about Jon in this colyoom the week before, when I related our nightmare teenage holiday in Greece, so his memory was fresh in my brainbox, and I felt his presence with me on that day.

'Stop being a prat, Adley!’ I told myself, and put on the T-shirt, but each time I looked at the name, John with an ‘h’, I had a ridiculous and irrational emotional reaction.

This geezer’s name on my shirt was not Jon’s, but what did it matter? This day, this walk, this fund-raising event was not about me and my pedantic neurotic needs.

Somewhat foolishly, I decided to mention what had happened to the organisers, making sure to stress that it really was not a problem to me in the slightest, but that maybe in future, what with there being all manner of new nationalities and names arriving to live in Ireland, attention to detail might help avoid people getting upset.

I hated myself for saying anything, because however I emphasised that I was fine with it, that it wasn’t about me but potential walkers of the future, the more the friendly hospice professionals apologised.

Maybe, through their depth of experience, they could see more in my eyes than they let on. I was certainly unaware of how emotionally messed up I was.

Stepping outside the Claddagh Hall, I stood by the dock and watched all the wonderful walkers turning up in their T-shirts. Nobody seemed to be alone, and even though I would normally loathe to have company on a walk, I felt strangely lonely and, once again sad.

Looking at the Irish names on all the others’ T-shirts, I suddenly had a bit of a panic. Oh no, I should be walking for my little four year-old friend from Mayo who died last year.

How could I forget Alana?
How could I not think to put her name on my T-shirt?

And who is this person whose name is on my T-shirt? It’s not Jon. And why do I feel so nervous?

Why do I feel so scared of being a part of this crowded walk? And why and why and why …

Jon was a very beautiful and calm man. As if he stood at that very moment by my side, I heard his gentle whisper in my ear.

‘Stop being a prat, Charlie! Get yourself out of here, and walk somewhere else. This is not for you today. You’re too much of a mess.’

With the rain starting to fall, I ran away, jumped into my car and drove far away from the crowds. I felt horrible, hopeless, guilty as charged, and could not, for some reason, stop crying.

Eventually I parked at the beach in Furbo, and proceeded to walk long and alone: stumbling over rocks; squidging wet-booted through flooded fields, and finally sitting, breathing, restoring my mental order on a boulder covered with clams.

I walked for all those who had sponsored me.
I walked for the Galway Hospice.
I walked for Jon.
I walked for Alana.

Jon aspired to be a real rock’n’roll person, always cutting his own personal swathe. I felt that he understood and truly appreciated why I’d done a runner from the official Walk.

And I walked for myself, taking time to lie on my belly at face-level with a river, mesmerised by the beauty of the babbling flow, as I regained control of my emotions, and accepted that evidently I had seriously needed to grieve.

What better organisation to be the catalyst for such an emotional outpouring than the Galway Hospice?

So that is my confession: I threw a wobbly, cried a bucket and walked alone. But what of the package in the mail?

Yes - you guessed it! Reaffirming my faith in the future of our species, and going way beyond any hopes, expectations, even idle daydreams, Fiona at the Galway Hospice saw fit to print a T-shirt with Jon’s name on it, and send it to me, with an apology and a thank you note.

At this stage, all I want to say is no, please, let me thank you, for bowling me over and showing so much love and care that I am, once again, quite emotional. Oh and thanks to the Universe for sending us people like that!

©Charlie Adley
12.10.2006

Celebrating a million readers, here's the #1 most read DV of all time: Galway, City, where nobody needs a name!

Thanks to galwaytourism.ie/

“How ya doing?”
 
“Mighty. And you?”
 
“Good thanks. Bit tricky this, but your mate with the northern accent, the lad we were drinking coffee with outside Pura Vida? I’ve known him for years. We’ll often stop and chat. Thing is, I’m not sure of his name.”
 
As my friend stares at me over the table I’m not sure if I’m about to be reprimanded or helped out. How could I possibly be so shallow as to say I know someone, when I haven’t a clue what they’re called?
 
His mouth drops open, his eyes stare at the table as a gathering red flushes up from his chin to the crown of his head.
 
“Jeeze Charlie. Now that you mention it, I’m not sure myself. I think he’s married to the sister of that Dave from the market, because it’s his brother I was talking to. Not the brother from Letterfrack, he’s not been around, the other fella, the one who married the Yank and moved over there and came back after the crash, he’s working in Thermo King now I think, and …”
 
As he rambles I find myself forgetting who it was I was asking about in the first place and no longer caring in the slightest. Over the last couple of decades I’ve become used to this.
 
U2 sang about the land where streets have no names, but the truth is that sometimes in Galway City, people don’t need them either.
 
Even though this city has changed in many ways since I moved here in 1992, all the things I first loved about it remain almost intact, so I was saddened to hear Whispering Blue and Soldier Boy, both raised here, agree that the place had lost what made it special.
 
They felt that the place had grown too big, lost its intimacy and spontaneity.
 
Whenever I walk around Galway City streets with one of my local mates I’m still to this day astonished at the number of people they know. I’m a Londoner and over there bumping into people you know is a rare and special event.
 
To me this buzzing upcoming European Capital of Culture is still also a provincial county town, with an extraordinary smile on its face and a spring in its step. 

Home to dreamers, scribblers, dancers and software designers, you’ll know many people in Galway, just not necessarily by name.
 
This city of 14 tribes has many more now. Scores of Brit blow-ins like me; Europeans availing of free movement; 20,000 students and a welcome tide of others from further afield. Also, let’s not forget those poor souls lost in the limbo of Direct Provision. It’s easy to ignore them. Many of us do, but they live here too.
 
Many wonderful tribes from all over the world on this western seaboard, colliding with local culture, wondering what on earth everyone is talking about. 

If you are one of the many thousands recently arrived in this wonderful patch of the planet, allow me to share the following snippets of advice, gleaned from 24 years of simultaneously sticking out and blending in.
 
Despite what they tell you, never ask anyone if there’s any craic. Nothing, and I mean absolutely nothing will plunge a conversation into silence, a room into panic, a mood from light into darkness than somebody asking if there’s any craic. 

Unless there’s been a very recent death in the community, the air will hang heavy until someone starts talking about sport or a new dress on sale in Monsoon or, thank the Lord for its ubiquity and neutrality: the weather.
 
As a naïve new Galwegian you will at some point inevitably find yourself trapped by a local, who is convinced that you know somebody that you don’t.
 
You need to be prepared. There’s more than a little bit of Mrs. Doyle about it all, but instead of a cup of tea being forced upon you, the other person cannot rest easy until you either admit that you absolutely definitely don’t know the person never have never will now please step away from my face, or simply lie and say oh yeh, him? I know the fella.
 
If for you, as it was for me, you find neither of these options attractive, because you don’t want to upset someone and you don’t like telling porky pies, then learn this my friend, and use it freely:
 
“I’d know him to see him.”
 
Works a treat every time. The Galwegian who was for obscure reasons obsessed with you knowing this absolute stranger will breathe out, nod, smile and like a humpback whale across hundreds of miles of ocean, return the call:
 
“Ah you would! You’d know him to see him.”
 
After this blissful exchange life will immediately return to normal, whatever that might be in Galway.
 
Just room for one more quick-pick of idiomatic signposting. Even though the Irish are fascinated by death, preferring a good funeral to a bad wedding any day, they don’t mean someone’s died when they describe them as ‘up above.’
 
‘Up above’ can mean they’re still at home with Ma in Shantalla or taking a few months rehab in the cottage in Roundstone. I know from experience that this tiny bit of knowledge can save a whole heap of tragic confusion.
 
Only locals truly know how much this place has changed, but for me, never mind the streets, until the day comes when we need to know our friends’ names, there’s hope for Galway City.


©Charlie Adley
02.11.2016

Double Vision hits the million mark - thanks so much to my colyoomistas!

Double Vision started appearing weekly in the papers in 1992 and has been online since 2007. Last night we welcomed our millionth reader. 

A friend in London wondered how many of those visits were 'bot attacks', and certainly there was one day when DV had 6,000 hits from Singapore, so that must've been bot-mania at work. 

Beyond that, most visits are spread over the hundreds of colyooms posted here.

To celebrate this happy day I'll be posting three DVs: the most read colyoom posted here, along with a couple of my personal favourites.

Watch this space to see which ones I choose, and thanks so much for your loyal support.

 

 

©Charlie Adley 24.06.2026.

Thank you, Dagmar - only an artist could help as you did!

Scent of Memory by Dagmar Drabent. - click here to visit her website.

“Write it for fun!” Dagmar said, outside Tigh Neachtain - where else.

She’d asked me if I was writing, and I snuffled and blurbled a few imaginative excuses.

“Y’see, there’s this new nerve pain from a crushed vertebra high in my back...”

“Y’see when I was ill they put me on Disability and now I’m on a pension, and while I do need extra green folding most of the time, I’m loving the beach walks and staring into guilt-free space...”

“Y’see I’ve been rebooting the pre-online archive of Double Vision, as the online version nears a million hits...”

No, I wasn’t impressed either.

Since moving in to my little house, after seven years of overwhelming, all-consuming misfortune, I was happy to be a human just being. I avoided writing anything that required a deadline.

I’d lived off my scribbling for 27 years, and I give thanks for that.

Wooh Yeh. Thank you so much!

I wrote whatever I wanted and newspapers paid me for it. Columns and features.
It doesn’t really get better for a vocational writer.

There’s this play I was writing. The Abbey Theatre were running a competition to submit an idea for a play, and if you won they’d work on it with you and make it happen. I think it’s become a permanent offer these days.

My play is called Townland, and I love it it, mostly because I haven’t written it yet. When it becomes words on paper I’ll love it a lot less. I’ll see only weaknesses and how it could be better, but it’s been in the file for a few years now.

Until, that is, I’m sitting on Galway’s Cross Street with Paul and Dagmar on a Thursday afternoon, and she says:

“Why not write it for fun?"

Fun?
Don’t be writing it for the Abbey. Write it for fun.

How the hell had I forgotten Play, my core modus operandi?

I just finished teaching my first course since my illness, so for eight weeks I’ve been pummelling my poor pupils with the concept of Play, all the while ignoring my own rule; if it is a rule.

Play is my mindset; my canvas; my first draft; my everything. It’s the document I write in, the headspace I create in. 

When you’re playing you can’t go wrong.
When I’m writing I feel free.

Reflections on Galway Bay by Dagmar Drabent - click here to visit her website.
 

Dagmar couldn’t have known that I’d been avoiding Play, because I didn’t know either. Once in a while I should maybe listen to myself. And Dagmar.

For those colyoomistas who’ve spotted an absence of fresh DV content recently, here’s what’s been happening.

Back from Galway, I followed my instincts and trusted my experience. I fished out a bag filled with all the pics that have adorned the walls of my workspace, wherever I lived. They offered constancy in a life of many continents.

A postcard of an Utrillo street scene that evokes my teenage hitching years in France. A Modigliani woman that reminds me how strong simple strokes can be the most powerful and effective. 

 

Photos of my two dead Jons, both with no ‘h’, who used to live a mile from each other in London. Ancient photos of my posse, the Class of ’77. We have shared our lives all our lives. Significant cartoons which either illustrated my work or my ideas.

I didn’t put them up when I moved in, because I didn’t want a workplace.

Play.
Fun.

Then I ordered an office chair online, because if I’m about to write then I deserve it. Then I endured a ridiculous Saturday afternoon failing to put it together, while trying not to trigger the nerve pain.

When that mutha hits it can knock me off my feet. Like someone put my body into a microwave.

I’m sitting on that chair now, with my workplace pics up around me. Home.

 

No, I absolutely am not several thousand words into the play.

I’ve opened the folder called Townland Stuff, and made some fresh notes. I've edited the start of it which I wrote years ago. Less brogue. 

I’m not writing because the Abbey may or may not want to see the play. I’m playing.

I thought it was a rejection letter they sent, but Conor 'Monty' Montague told me it wasn’t.

Monty pointed out that they’d asked to see it when it was written. I’d only seen the words they wrote about not making into their ‘Ideas’ process.

Monty is, by the way, the living breathing Patron Saint of Scribblers. Unsung, unlauded, altruistic, helping scores of writers for the love of writing, and a damn fine wordsmith himself, if you like gonzo madness, gore and ironic excitement. Who doesn’t?

When you’re a scribbler you gain a broad collection of rejections. They differ and dither between hope and damnation. When I lived in Connemara a friend close by insisted that I was a much better writer than him.

“You’ve a much better collection of rejections than I have, Charlie.”

Please take note, one Iris Leal. Back sometime in the 1980s you had just described my writing as ‘a cave painting’, and told me (or screamed wildly at me, if you’re English and not Israeli) that one day I would read a lot of books.

You were right.

Over the last six years I’ve read an absolute shitload of books, mostly modern fiction.

I’ve calmed the fuck down.

The Townland folder is open, and I’m a better writer than I was back when I hid it there, before all those books.

I’m on my spanky new office chair; my pics are up; I’ve written some notes, and realised today that English Tom’s voice needs to be more clipped.

Dagmar could not know how incredibly apt her advice was.

Then again, as an artist she recognises the importance of freedom, of creating for the love of it.

Thanks Dagmar!


©Charlie Adley
12.06.2026

 Dagmar on Spotify